Class 6 Science Chapter 3: Mindful Eating: A Path to a Healthy Body

A Week of Your Own Meals

Keep a list for seven days of everything you eat. Most children expect the list to be boring and find it is not. Then compare it with a friend's list from the same week. Some items match and some do not, and the differences are the interesting part.

Now Widen the Question

If two children in one classroom eat differently, what happens across a whole country? India has twenty-eight states and eight union territories. The traditional food of each looks quite unlike the next. The question worth asking is not whether it differs, but why.

Start With What Grows

Look at three states side by side. Punjab grows maize, wheat, chickpea and pulses. Karnataka grows rice, ragi, urad and coconut. Manipur grows rice, bamboo and soya bean. Now look at what each eats, and the pattern is hard to miss.

The Food Follows the Crop

Punjab eats chhole bhature and parantha, halwa and kheer, and makki di roti with sarson da saag. Karnataka eats ragi mudde and rice, idli and dosa, rasam and sambhar, palya and coconut chutney. Manipur eats rice with eromba, utti, singju and kangsoi. Each list is built from the crops just above it.

Even the Drinks

The beverages follow too. Punjab drinks lassi and chhach, which is buttermilk, along with milk and tea. Karnataka drinks buttermilk, coffee and tea. Manipur drinks black tea. What grows nearby is what ends up in the glass as well as on the plate.

Why the Crops Differ

That pushes the question one step back. Why does Punjab grow maize and Karnataka ragi? India is an agricultural country with many soil types and many climates. Which crops a region can grow depends on its soil and its weather.

But Crops Are Not the Whole Answer

Three more things shape what a region eats. Taste preferences, which are simply what people there have come to like. Culture. And traditions, which carry a dish from one generation to the next long after the reason for it has been forgotten.

Some Foods Are Everywhere

Compare the state lists carefully and two kinds of item appear. Some turn up almost everywhere, rice being the clearest. Others belong to one place alone. Both kinds are worth noticing, because they answer different questions about a country.

Ask Somebody Older

There is a second question hiding here. Has the food itself stayed the same? Ask an elderly person in your family what they still eat and what is new to them, what has changed about cooking, and what they think caused it. Their answers are evidence you cannot get any other way.

From the Chulha to the Stove

Culinary practices, which is the other name for cooking practices, have changed a great deal. Most cooking was once done on a chulha, a traditional stove. Most of us now cook on a modern gas stove. The food may be the same dish, but the process is not.

From the Sil-batta to the Grinder

The second pair is grinding. Most grinding was once done by hand on a sil-batta, a stone grinder. These days an electrical grinder does the work in a fraction of the time. Anyone who has used both can tell you exactly what changed.

Why Anything Changed at All

Three reasons stand behind those changes. Technological development, which put new tools within reach. Improved transportation, which brought foods from further away. And better communication, which carried ideas about cooking from one place to another.

What Else Went With the Chulha

Think about what a change of tool actually changes. A chulha burns wood or dung and needs somebody to tend it. A gas stove lights at a turn and goes out at a turn. That is a difference in time, in smoke, in who does the work, and in what the kitchen smells like.

The Saying on the Noticeboard

The chapter opens with an old line: annena jatani jivanti, which means food is what gives life to every living being. Another says the healthy person is the one whose food is wholesome, moderate in quantity, and suited to the season, the time and the place. Both are worth holding on to.

What This Chapter Is Really About

So variety in food is not random. It is the record of a place: its soil, its weather, its history and its tools. The next question is what all this food is actually made of, and why the body needs each part of it.

Scenario:

A class lists what each child ate the day before. Rice appears on many lists and bajra roti on a few. Their teacher asks why the lists differ when everybody lives in one town. The children ask at home and bring back answers about where their families come from. Then they look at a crop map of India. Rice grows where rain is heavy, and bajra where it is light and the soil is dry. The two foods line up with two kinds of land. Meera says the lists are really a map. The class agrees that what a region eats grew out of what its own fields could raise.

Analysis:

A meal looks like a personal choice and is partly a record of the land. Rice and bajra differ because rainfall does.

Activity:

Ask three families which grain they eat most. Find out where each family comes from and whether the rainfall there is heavy or light.

Title:

The seven-day plate diary

Safety:

This is a writing task only. Do not skip a meal or change what you eat in order to make an interesting list.

What You Notice:

Your own list is more varied than you expected, which is the first surprise. The second is that the items that do not match usually come from somewhere: a grandmother's state, a festival, a crop grown near a family home. The differences have histories.

The traditional food of a state usually follows the crops that state grows, which is why maize appears in Punjab and ragi in Karnataka.

Manipur grows bamboo as a food crop, and eromba, utti, singju and kangsoi are eaten there.

Technological development, better transport and better communication are the reasons the book gives for changed cooking practices.

What decides the food of a region — CTCT - Crops, Taste, Culture, Tradition — Crops come first because they set what is available. The other three shape the choice.

Old tool and new tool — Chulha to stove, sil-batta to grinder — Two pairs, and both changes are about the same three reasons.

Skip a Meal and Notice

Everyone has missed a meal at some point. What happens is not subtle. You feel tired and much less energetic, and it comes on within hours. That feeling is the plainest evidence there is that food is doing something inside you, and not just filling a space.

The Runner and the Glucose

Watch a marathon and you will see runners drinking glucose water during the race and again after it. Why glucose and not something else? Because glucose gives energy at once, and at that moment there is no time to wait.

Glucose Belongs to a Family

Glucose is not a thing on its own. It is an example of a carbohydrate, and carbohydrates are among the primary sources of energy in what we eat. Once you know that, a long list of ordinary foods falls into place.

Where the Carbohydrates Are

Cereals carry them: wheat, rice, maize, bajra. So do vegetables such as potato and sweet potato. So do fruits such as banana, pineapple and mango. And so does the common sugar in the kitchen, which is itself a kind of carbohydrate.

Why Laddoos in Winter

Ask why laddoos appear in winter and a grandmother is likely to say they give energy and keep you warm. Look at what goes into one. Besan or wheat flour, which is aata, along with ghee, goond, nuts and seeds. The ghee is the part that matters here.

Ghee and Oils Are Fats

Ghee and the various cooking oils belong to a second food component, called fat. Its sources can be plants or animals. Among the nuts are walnuts and almonds, groundnuts and coconuts and almonds carry it. So do seeds such as pumpkin seeds and sunflower seeds.

Fat Is Energy Kept Back

Carbohydrate is energy you can spend now. Fat is a source of stored energy, held for later. That difference matters more than it sounds, and the clearest illustration of it is an animal that has to live for months without a single meal.

The Polar Bear's Winter

A polar bear builds up a great deal of fat under its skin. That fat is its energy source through a winter sleep, called hibernation, that lasts months. It survives the whole of it without eating. The store is the only thing keeping it alive.

One Name for Both

Carbohydrates and fats both give us energy for doing things, so the two of them share a name: energy-giving foods. Try listing more foods rich in each. Most kitchens turn out to be full of them.

A Different Kind of Job

Not every food component is about energy. Proteins are an important part of what we eat, and they do something else entirely. Pulses carry them, and so do the milk products, which is why both turn up in almost every Indian meal.

From Plants and From Animals

Protein comes from both. Excellent plant sources are pulses, beans, peas and nuts, which on a plate means gram, moong, tuar dal, kidney beans, peas and soya bean. Animal sources are milk, paneer, egg, fish and meat.

Growth and Repair

What protein does is help the body grow and repair itself. That is why protein-rich foods are called body-building foods, and why sportspersons need protein in larger quantities to build their muscles.

Why It Matters for You

Growing children need the right amount of protein for proper growth and development. Not none, and not endless quantities either. The right amount, which is a phrase that comes back later in this chapter and matters more each time.

An Unexpected Source

Mushrooms deserve a mention here. Most kinds come up in places that are dark and damp, and the edible ones carry good protein. Not every protein food is a pulse or a piece of meat.

What Is Still Missing

So three components are accounted for. Carbohydrates and fats for energy, proteins for building. But none of those explains why sailors on long voyages once fell ill, and why a slice of lemon cured them. That is the next topic.

Scenario:

Two pupils plan a day's meals for a school trip. Ravi wants only sweets and biscuits, arguing that sugar gives instant energy. Sana agrees about the energy and asks what else the day needs. Their teacher gives them a simple table of what a plate should carry. The class works out that energy foods are only one row of several. Walking all day uses energy, so carbohydrates matter, but the children are also still growing, and growth needs protein. Ravi changes his plan. He keeps something sweet for the climb and adds dal and curd for the rest. The class sees that a diet answers more than one question at a time.

Analysis:

Ravi was right that glucose is quick energy and wrong that a day needs only energy. Growth and repair need protein whatever the walking demands.

Activity:

Write a day of meals for a long walk. Mark which item supplies energy and which supplies growth, and check that both appear.

Title:

Sort your own kitchen shelf

Safety:

Ask before you open a shelf or a jar. Do not taste anything, do not climb, and stay away from the stove and from anything hot or sharp.

What You Notice:

The carbohydrate column fills fastest in most Indian kitchens, because cereals are the base of the meal. The starred items are the interesting ones. Peanuts belong in two columns, and so does milk, and that is a real finding rather than a mistake.

A polar bear builds up fat under its skin and lives on it through a winter sleep that lasts months, without eating.

Edible mushrooms, which come up in dark and damp places, carry good protein.

The common sugar in your kitchen is a kind of carbohydrate, just as glucose is.

What each component does — Carbs run, fats store, protein builds — Three jobs in three words. Energy now, energy later, and the building work.

Where protein comes from — Pulses and paneer — One plant word and one animal word, to remind you the sources come from both.

Two Puzzles, Two Centuries Apart

Carbohydrates, fats and proteins do not explain everything. Two stories show why. One happened at sea in the seventeen hundreds, and one in India in the nineteen sixties. Both begin with a group of people falling ill for no reason anyone could see.

Case One: The Sailors

Sailors on the long voyages of earlier times often developed gums that bled and swelled. On one such voyage, in 1746, a Scottish physician named James Lind noticed something. Those who ate lemons and oranges recovered. The others did not.

What Lind Had Found

Gums that bleed and swell are the marks of a disease called scurvy. Lemons and oranges are citrus fruits and they carry Vitamin C, and scurvy follows a shortage of it. The cure was not a medicine at all. It was a missing part of the food.

Case Two: The Swollen Necks

In the 1960s, Indian scientists found something among people of the Himalayan region and of the Northern plains: swellings low in the throat were widespread. This time the answer lay not in the food itself but in the ground the food grew in.

Iodine, Missing From the Soil

The soil of that region was short of iodine, so the local food and water were short of it too. A swelling low in the throat is the sign of goitre, and goitre follows a lack of iodine. Nobody there was eating badly. The place itself was short of something.

What Was Done About It

The Government of India set norms, and iodine began to be added to common salt. Iodised salt is nothing exotic: ordinary salt with iodine salts blended in, in the quantity needed. Where people used it, the swelling visibly reduced.

The People Who Farm Salt

Salt itself has a story. The Agariyas are a tribal community of salt farmers. They work the Little Rann of Kutch, and elsewhere in Gujarat too. Eight months of every year they spend out in fierce desert heat, and winning salt from seawater is hard labour.

The Pattern in Both Cases

Look at the two cases together and the shape is the same. A group of people, a set of symptoms, and one food component missing. Put the component back and the symptoms go. That pattern gave a name to a whole class of illness.

Vitamin A and Vitamin B1

Vitamin A keeps eyes and skin healthy, and comes from papaya, carrot, mango and milk. Without it comes loss of vision, starting with poor sight in darkness. Vitamin B1 keeps the heart healthy and supports many bodily functions, and comes from legumes, nuts, whole grains, seeds and milk products. Its lack causes beriberi.

Vitamin C and Vitamin D

Vitamin C helps the body fight diseases and comes from amla, guava, green chilli, orange and lemon. Without it comes scurvy: bleeding gums and slow healing of wounds. Vitamin D helps the body absorb calcium for bones and teeth, and comes from sunlight, milk, butter, fish and eggs. Its lack causes rickets, which means soft and bent bones.

The Three Minerals

Calcium keeps bones and teeth healthy and comes from milk, soya milk, curd, cheese and paneer; without it come weak bones and tooth decay. Iodine supports physical and mental activity and comes from seaweed, singhada and iodised salt; without it comes goitre. Iron is an important part of blood and comes from green leafy vegetables, beetroot and pomegranate; without it comes anaemia.

The Word for All of Them

A food component earns the name nutrient when it gives energy, supports growth, helps repair, guards the body against disease and keeps its functions running. The major ones in food are carbohydrates, proteins, fats, vitamins and minerals. Five in all.

Why Protective

Vitamins and minerals carry a second name too, the protective nutrients, because that is the job they do: guarding the body against disease and keeping it healthy. They are needed only in small amounts. Small is not the same as optional.

What Cooking Takes Away

Notice what happens to vegetables when they are cooked. They lose their bright colour and turn softer and less crisp. Some nutrients, Vitamin C among them, are lost to the high heat. That is a good argument for including fruits and uncooked vegetables in a diet.

And a Warning About Washing

Washing cut or peeled vegetables and fruits also loses some vitamins into the water. That is not a reason to skip washing. All fruits and vegetables should be washed thoroughly before they are eaten. Wash them whole, before cutting, and you lose less.

Scenario:

A class reads that sailors on a 1746 voyage recovered when they were given lemons and oranges. Imran says the sailors must have been hungry. Nita points out that they had food and still fell ill, so hunger is not the explanation. Their teacher asks what lemons carry that ship's rations did not. The answer is Vitamin C, and the illness was scurvy. The class then looks at how long such a voyage lasted and what kept well at sea. Salted meat and dry biscuit last for months; fresh fruit does not. The children see that the illness followed from the storage problem rather than from any shortage of food.

Analysis:

Enough food and the right food are different things. The voyage had quantity and lacked one protective nutrient, and that is what the lemons supplied.

Activity:

Find out which foods in your kitchen keep for months and which spoil in days. Write one sentence on what a long journey would lose.

Title:

Read the label, find the mineral

Safety:

Handle packets only, not open containers. Do not taste anything, and put every packet back where you found it.

What You Notice:

Most salt packets say something about iodine, and most people have never read it. The amount is printed in very small type, which is itself worth noticing. The answer to the last question often reaches back to exactly the years the chapter describes.

James Lind was a Scottish physician, and the voyage on which he made his observation was in 1746.

The Agariyas are a tribal community who win salt from seawater in the Little Rann of Kutch, and elsewhere in Gujarat.

For eight months a year the Agariyas work out in fierce desert heat to win that salt.

The four vitamins in the chart — A eyes, B1 heart, C fights, D bones — One word each for what they look after. The deficiency diseases follow from it.

The three minerals — Calcium bones, Iodine neck, Iron blood — Bone and tooth decay, goitre, and anaemia are the three things that go wrong.

Something That Feeds You Nothing

Here is an odd item. Dietary fibres, also called roughage, provide no nutrients to the body at all. Nothing. And yet they are described as an essential component of our food. A thing that feeds you nothing and is still necessary needs explaining.

What Roughage Actually Does

Its job is clearing up. Roughage helps the body be rid of undigested food, and keeps stools passing smoothly. Anybody with an elderly relative told by a doctor to eat more fibre has already met this advice from the other end.

Where to Find It

It comes mainly from plant products. Wholegrains and pulses supply it, so do nuts, so does fresh fruit, and so do the green leafy vegetables. Notice that the list is almost entirely things people are told to eat more of for other reasons too.

Water Is Part of the Diet

Water counts as an essential part of what we eat, not merely something to drink alongside it. It does two jobs. It helps the body absorb nutrients out of food, and it carries waste away in sweat and in urine. Both matter every day.

Not Everything Comes From a Field

There is a neat question hiding here: do we get all nutrients from plants and animals? No. Salt can come from seawater or from rocks. And Vitamin D can be made by the body itself, simply on being exposed to sunlight.

Eat Local Where You Can

The chapter adds an argument that reaches past the body. Food grown nearby, and coming from plants where that is possible, is healthy for you and also good for the environment and the planet. That is two reasons for one habit.

The Man Who Measured Indian Food

Coluthur Gopalan, who lived from 1918 to 2019, began nutrition research in India. He measured the nutritional value of more than five hundred Indian foods, and set out what a suitable diet looks like in an Indian context, rather than borrowing one.

What His Surveys Found

He led surveys of the nutritional status of the Indian population. They found widespread deficiencies in protein, in energy, and in other food components. That is not an opinion about food. It is a measurement, across a country, and it had consequences.

From a Survey to a School Meal

The work led to the Mid Day Meal Programme. From 2002 it has run as the PM POSHAN initiative. It provides balanced food in government-run and government-aided schools. Millions of children across the country have eaten better because of it.

Can You Test Food Yourself?

Some of this can be checked by hand. Starch, which is a type of carbohydrate, along with fat and protein, can be detected with fairly simple tests. Other components can only be found in a well-equipped laboratory, so three is what we get.

Test One: Iodine for Starch

Take small pieces of several foods, each on its own dish. Potato and cucumber. Bread, and rice and gram both boiled. Peanuts and coconut, both crushed. A little oil and butter. Put two or three drops of diluted iodine solution on each with a dropper. Watch the colour. Blue-black means starch is there.

Test Two: Paper for Fat

Take the same food items again. Put each on its own piece of paper, wrap the paper around it and press, being careful not to tear it. If the item holds a little water, let the paper dry first. Then look for an oily patch.

Holding the Paper to the Light

The patch is the answer, and there is a way to be sure of it. Hold the paper up against the light. Can you see light shining faintly through the patch? That is fat. Oil and butter leave it plainly, and so, less obviously, do peanuts and coconut.

Test Three: Violet for Protein

This one your teacher may demonstrate. Grind each food to a paste or powder with a pestle and mortar. Put about half a teaspoon into a clean test tube. Add two or three teaspoons of water and shake well. Now two drops of copper sulfate solution, and after them ten drops of caustic soda solution. Shake, and leave it undisturbed for a few minutes.

What You See, and What You Must Not Do

A violet colour in the tube means protein. Now the precautions, which are not optional. These chemicals are harmful. Do not touch any of them unless you are told to. If any spills on you, wash the place with water at once. Never put them in your mouth, and never try to smell them.

Peanuts Answer Twice

Fill in the table and one result stands out. Peanuts show the presence of both protein and fat. So a food is not one nutrient wearing a label. Any food we eat may contain several at once, which is exactly what the next topic is built on.

Scenario:

A class tests three foods for starch, fat and protein. Rohit reports that his bread sample shows no starch. The others get a clear result from the same loaf. Their teacher asks the class to compare how each test was done. Rohit used two drops of iodine on a damp piece. The rest dried their samples first and used one drop. The class repeats the test with the drying step added and Rohit's sample now shows starch plainly. Sana writes down what went wrong. The food was not different, the method was, and a test only means something when every sample is treated the same way.

Analysis:

One odd result among three usually points at the method rather than the food. Repeating with the step restored turned the odd result into agreement.

Activity:

Test two foods for starch twice, once damp and once dried. Write down both results and say which step mattered.

Title:

The paper test, done properly

Safety:

Only the fat test, which uses no chemicals. Do not attempt the protein test at home: copper sulfate and caustic soda are harmful and belong in a school laboratory.

What You Notice:

Butter and peanut leave a patch you can see through. Cucumber leaves a damp mark that vanishes as it dries, which is exactly why the chapter tells you to wait. The potato is the interesting one, because it holds starch and almost no fat, so the paper stays clear.

Coluthur Gopalan, who lived from 1918 to 2019, measured the nutritional value of over 500 Indian foods.

His surveys led to the Mid Day Meal Programme of 2002, now run as the PM POSHAN initiative.

Peanuts turn up positive in two of the three tests, showing both protein and fat.

The three tests — Iodine blue-black, paper oily, violet protein — Each test named by what you see. Colour, patch, colour again.

What roughage and water do — Neither feeds you, both are essential — Roughage carries no nutrients and water is not one, yet the body needs both.

Does Everyone Need the Same Food?

Ask whether you and your grandparents need the same nutrients, in the same amounts, and the answer is plainly no. Requirements vary with age, with gender, with how much physical activity a person does, with health, and with the way somebody lives.

The Definition to Hold On To

The definition runs like this. A diet counts as balanced when it carries every essential nutrient, plus roughage and water, in amounts right for the body to grow and develop. Read that again and notice the words in the right amount. That is the part doing the real work.

Check Your Own Week

Go back to the list of everything you ate over a week. Does it carry all the nutrients and the other essential components? If not, which are missing? That is a question you can answer yourself, and it is more useful than any general advice about eating well.

Two Packets, Side by Side

Here is a real comparison. Take a packet of potato wafers, and beside it a packet of roasted chana. Both carry nutritional information for 100 grams. Read both before choosing, and the choice starts to look different.

What the Numbers Say

Take 100 grams of each. The wafers give 536 kilocalories. Their fat is 35.0 g, carbohydrate 53.0 g, protein 7.0 g, dietary fibre 4.8 g. The roasted chana gives 355 kilocalories. Its fat is 6.26 g, carbohydrate 58.58 g, protein 18.64 g, fibre 16.8 g.

Reading Those Two Columns

The chana has more than twice the protein and more than three times the fibre, on far less fat and fewer calories. The wafers win on nothing except energy density, and energy is the one thing most of us are not short of.

The Name for the Losing Column

Some foods carry a great many calories, because sugar and fat run high in them, while protein, minerals, vitamins and dietary fibre all run very low. Those are called junk foods. Potato wafers, candy bars and carbonated drinks are the examples in the chapter.

Why Frequent Is the Problem

Nobody says one packet ruins a person. What the chapter says is that eating such foods frequently is not good for the body. It can make a person obese, and someone who becomes obese may suffer from several health problems.

Health Is the Ultimate Wealth

Dr Poshita, the nutritional expert at the food festival, keeps repeating a line: health is the ultimate wealth. Keeping to a balanced diet, and staying off junk food, are the two habits that build towards a healthy body, and good health is what a happy life rests on.

Four Grains Coming Back

You have probably heard of jowar, bajra, ragi and sanwa, which is the barnyard millet. These are native crops of India and they can be cultivated easily in many different climates. Together they are called millets.

Why Millets Are Called Nutri-cereals

Millets are small grains that India has eaten for centuries. They are popular again now, for what they do for health. They carry vitamins in quantity, along with minerals such as iron and calcium, and of dietary fibres, which is why they carry the second name nutri-cereals.

What a Packet Must Tell You

Packaged food must carry information about its nutrients on the cover, listing the amount of each one. Sometimes a maker puts extra nutrients into a food while processing it, to raise its nutritional quality. That is called fortification, and iodised salt is one result of it. Certain baby foods are another.

Who Checks the Packets

India's Food Safety and Standard Authority, known as FSSAI, is the government body charged with regulating food quality here. So the label on a packet is not merely a claim by whoever sold it to you.

The Story of a Chapati

How does food get from a farm to a plate? A farmer grows the wheat. The grain is threshed and winnowed, then stored. It is ground and packed, then transported to a retail shop. Only then does it reach the plate. Count the people involved and the time taken.

Food Miles

Add up the whole journey a bag of wheat makes, or any other food, from the person who produced it to the person who eats it. That total is called its food miles. Shortening it cuts the cost and the pollution of transport, supports local farmers, and keeps food fresher.

And Do Not Waste It

Many people leave food unconsumed on their plates. Think of the time and effort that farmers and others put into moving it from the farm to that plate. Take only as much as you can eat. Eat healthy, share, and respect food.

Scenario:

The canteen at a school in Dharwad has money for one new snack. Two are offered at the same price. The first is potato wafers. Per 100 grams the packet declares 536 kilocalories, 35.0 g of fat, 53.0 g of carbohydrate, 7.0 g of protein and 4.8 g of dietary fibre. The second is roasted chana. Its packet declares 355 kilocalories, 6.26 g of fat, 58.58 g of carbohydrate, 18.64 g of protein and 16.8 g of fibre. The wafers are made four hundred kilometres away. The chana is roasted by a family in the next town. Several students say the wafers will sell better. The Class 6 group has been asked to advise the canteen committee before it decides.

Analysis:

Two separate questions are tangled together here. One is what the food does to the body, which the labels answer. The other is how far it travelled, which they do not. Both point the same way this time, but they are not the same question.

Activity:

Collect five empty food packets from home, with permission. Copy the per-100-gram figures for energy, fat, protein and fibre into a table. Rank the five by protein and then by fat, and see whether the two rankings agree. Then find out, from the packet or from an adult, roughly where each one was made.

Title:

Three packets, one table

Safety:

Use empty packets only. Do not open any sealed packet to read its label, and wash your hands after handling used packaging.

What You Notice:

The columns rarely agree. A packet that wins on energy usually loses on fibre, which is the whole point of reading more than one number. The manufacturing address is the part almost nobody looks at, and it is often much further away than people guess.

Per 100 g, potato wafers carry 536 kilocalories and roasted chana 355, so the wafers are far denser in energy.

Per 100 g, roasted chana has 18.64 g of protein against 7.0 g in potato wafers, and 16.8 g of fibre against 4.8 g.

Sanwa is the barnyard millet, and jowar, bajra and ragi are the other three the chapter names.

What makes a diet balanced — All nutrients, roughage, water, right amount — Four parts. The last one is the part people forget, and it differs per person.

The four millets — Jowar, bajra, ragi, sanwa — All four are native crops of India, and all four are nutri-cereals.